Impacts of COVID-19 on rural livelihoods in Bangladesh: Evidence using panel data

Determinants of household's dietary diversity during the COVID-19 pandemic: A community-based study in rural Southwestern Bangladesh

BACKGROUND

Inadequate dietary diversity is a significant challenge in public health for low-and middle-income countries, including rural communities in Bangladesh. These issues have intensified and become more tragic during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study evaluated the factors associated with household dietary diversity in rural Southwestern Bangladesh during the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study used a structured questionnaire to collect data from 310 respondents using face-to-face interviews. Household Dietary Diversity Score (HDDS) and sociodemographic characteristics were calculated from the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA) guidelines and related studies. A multinomial regression model was performed to identify factors associated with HDDS during the COVID-19 outbreak.

RESULT

The HDDS status of rural Southwestern households decreased (60.3%) during the initial COVID-19 pandemic. Socioeconomic factors including gender, level of education, occupation, household monthly income, and family size of the household head were significantly associated with dietary diversity. Additionally, income condition (RRR:5.46, 95% CI:2.73-7.47 and RRR:4.85, 95% CI:2.48-7.24), and dietary diversity knowledge of the household head (RRR:5.46, 95% CI:2.73-7.47, and RRR:4.85, 95% CI:2.48-7.24) were significantly associated with low and moderate HDDS during the COVID-19 pandemic.

CONCLUSION

This study found that households become more vulnerable to inadequate dietary diversity due to poor socioeconomic status during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the findings, public health workers should ensure adequate food access and proper food distribution among rural households and communities in this crisis to mitigate these negative consequences.

The impact of COVID-19 on livelihood assets: a case study of high-value crop farmers in North-West Bangladesh

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a catastrophic impact on public health, extending to the food system and people's livelihoods worldwide, including Bangladesh. This study aimed to ascertain the COVID-19 pandemic impacts on livelihood assets in the North-Western areas (Rajshahi and Rangpur) of Bangladesh. Primary data were collected from 320 farmers engaged in high-value agriculture using a multistage sampling method. The data were analysed using first-order structural equation modelling. The findings reveal a significant impact (p < 0.01) of the pandemic on all livelihood assets in Bangladesh. Notably, human assets exhibited the highest impact, with a coefficient of 0.740, followed sequentially by financial (0.709), social (0.684), natural (0.600), physical (0.542), and psychological (0.537) assets. Government-imposed lockdowns and mobility restrictions were identified as the major causes of the pandemic's negative effects on livelihoods, which included lost income, rising food prices, decreased purchasing power, inadequate access to food and medical supplies, increased social insecurity, and a rise in depression, worry, and anxiety among farmers. The effects of COVID-19 and associated policy measures on the livelihoods of high-value crop farmers have reversed substantial economic and nutritional advances gained over the previous decade. This study suggests attention to the sustainable livelihoods of farmers through direct cash transfer and input incentive programs to minimize their vulnerability to a pandemic like COVID-19 or any other crisis in the future.

Women's empowerment, household dietary diversity, and child anthropometry among vulnerable populations in Odisha, India

Women's empowerment has been promoted by researchers and development practitioners as one of the most promising strategies to address widespread hunger and malnutrition. However, the relationship between women's empowerment and dietary diversity and child nutrition has rarely been studied among vulnerable populations or individuals at greater risk of poor physical and social health status. Moreover, the effects of different domains of women's empowerment on nutritional outcomes, including dietary diversity and child anthropometry, have rarely been examined, especially with panel data. Using two rounds of panel data from 1900 households and fixed effects regression models, we analyze the effect of women's empowerment on household dietary diversity score (HDDS) and child anthropometry among the particularly vulnerable tribal groups in Odisha, India. We also estimate the effects of various decision-making domains of women's empowerment on HDDS and child anthropometry to understand which empowerment domains matter for nutrition. Results show that women's empowerment is positively associated with HDDS (coef. 0.41 food groups; p < 0.1) and reduces the prevalence of underweight (coef. 39%; p < 0.05) and wasting (coef. 56%; p < 0.1) in children but has no effect on the prevalence of child stunting. Women's empowerment in agricultural input use; output sales; income; food purchases; and credit, group membership, and employment contribute to improved dietary diversity and child nutrition. We conclude that women's empowerment contributes to improved dietary diversity and child nutrition and is a promising strategy to improve farm household diets and child nutrition among vulnerable populations. Strengthening women's empowerment through the promotion of women's access to land and other agricultural inputs, market participation, access to information, capital, and credit is important.

The moderating role of Covid-19-related support on urban livelihood capitals: Evidence from suburban Accra

In the Global South, the COVID-19 crisis has compelled varied efforts to quickly address the pandemic's impact on urban livelihoods. Families, friends as well as public, private, and civil society organizations have mobilized various resources to avert the pandemic's onslaught on the survival of the urban vulnerable. Indeed, there is a burgeoning ‘pandemic urban scholarship’ that shed insights on COVID-19 risks, local responses, and impacts on everyday urban life. Yet, it is unclear how many of these responses are affecting urban livelihoods. This paper thus investigates the impact of COVID-19 on urban livelihood capitals (financial, human, social, and physical) and analyses the moderating role of COVID-19-related support (from families, friends, government agencies, faith-based and non-governmental organizations) to address the pandemic's impact on these capitals. Drawing on a quantitative study in Adenta Municipality of the Greater Accra Region, Ghana, the study finds a negative association between COVID-19 impacts and all urban livelihood capitals. Crucially, COVID-19-related support only reduced the negative impact of the pandemic on financial capital, and not on the other forms of capital. The study suggests that building post-pandemic community resilience warrants the need to transition from the usual reactive, fragmented support to integrated, holistic, and contextually embedded long-term strategies that consider the multi-dimensionality of everyday urban life.

Reduced tillage and crop diversification can improve productivity and profitability of rice-based rotations of the Eastern Gangetic Plains

Intensive rice (Oryza sativa)-based cropping systems in south Asia provide much of the calorie and protein requirements of low to middle-income rural and urban populations. Intensive tillage practices demand more resources, damage soil quality, and reduce crop yields and profit margins. Crop diversification along with conservation agriculture (CA)-based management practices may reduce external input use, improve resource-use efficiency, and increase the productivity and profitability of intensive cropping systems. A field study was conducted on loamy soil in a sub-tropical climate in northern Bangladesh to evaluate the effects of three tillage options and six rice-based cropping sequences on grain, calorie, and protein yields and gross margins (GM) for different crops and cropping sequences. The three tillage options were: (1) conservation agriculture (CA) with all crops in sequences untilled, (2) alternating tillage (AT) with the monsoon season rice crop tilled but winter season crops untilled, and (3) conventional tillage (CT) with all crops in sequences tilled. The six cropping sequences were: rice-rice (R-R), rice-mung bean (Vigna radiata) (R-MB), rice-wheat (Triticum aestivum) (R-W), rice-maize (Zea mays) (R-M), rice-wheat-mung bean (R-W-MB), and rice-maize-mung bean (R-M-MB). Over three years of experimentation, the average monsoon rice yield was 8% lower for CA than CT, but the average winter crops yield was 13% higher for CA than CT. Systems rice equivalent yield (SREY) and systems calorie and protein yields were about 5%, 3% and 6%, respectively, higher under CA than CT; additionally, AT added approximately 1% more to these benefits. The systems productivity gain under CA and AT resulted in higher GM by 16% while reducing the labor and total production cost under CA than CT. The R-M rotation had higher SREY, calorie, protein yields, and GM by 24%, 26%, 66%, and 148%, respectively, than the predominantly practiced R-R rotation. The R-W-MB rotation had the highest SREY (30%) and second highest (118%) GM. Considering the combined effect of tillage and cropping system, CA with R-M rotation showed superior performance in terms of SREY, protein yield, and GM. The distribution of labor use and GM across rotations was grouped into four categories: R-W in low-low (low labor use and low GM), R-M in low-high (low labor use and high GM), R-W-MB and R-M-MB in high-high (high labor use and high GM) and R-R and R-MB in high-low (high labor use and low GM). In conclusion, CA performed better than CT in different winter crops and cropping systems but not in monsoon rice. Our results demonstrate the multiple benefits of partial and full CA-based tillage practices employed with appropriate crop diversification to achieve sustainable food security with greater calorie and protein intake while maximizing farm profitability of intensive rice-based rotational systems.

Perceptions of COVID-19 shocks and adoption of sustainable agricultural practices in Ghana

Most studies on the novel COVID-19 pandemic have focused mainly on human health, food systems, and employment with limited studies on how farmers implement sustainable agricultural practices (SAPs) in response to the pandemic. This study examines how perceptions of COVID-19 shocks influence the adoption of SAPs among smallholder farmers in Ghana. We find that perceptions of COVID-19 shocks influence the probability and intensity of SAPs adoption. Secondly, households who anticipated COVID-19 shocks recorded heterogeneity effects in the combinations (complementarity and substitutability) of SAPs. Farmers who anticipated an increase in input prices and loss of income due to COVID-19 recorded the highest complementarity association between pesticide and zero tillage while farmers who expected limited market access reported the highest complementarity between mixed cropping and mulching. Farmers who projected a decrease in output prices complements pesticides with mixed cropping. The findings suggest that understanding the heterogeneity effects in the combinations of SAPs due to COVID-19 shocks is critical to effectively design, target and disseminate sustainable intensification programs in a post-pandemic period.

Diversified Farming Systems: Impacts and Adaptive Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, Norway and China

The COVID-19 pandemic fully exposed the vulnerability of the global agri-food system to shocks and stresses, highlighting the need for transformation and action to make it more resilient and inclusive. This paper offers a unique insight into the global nature of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining impacts and responses in the agri-food sector within three very distinct contexts, namely the United States, Norway, and China. Focusing on small, diversified farms, the study builds on prior research with the same farmers and support organizations from an on-going collaboration. Firstly, we conducted a short review of policy adaptations to understand how governments, the private sector, non-profit organizations, and communities “stepped up” to provide emergency relief, specialized training, and recovery support for farmers, support that was instrumental in preventing more devastating impacts in all three countries. Secondly, drawing from in-depth interviews with farmers (23) and government and non-governmental support organizations (19), we mapped the vulnerability and resiliency of selected farmers to shocks that severely disrupted traditional supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected on both the negative and positive impacts of the pandemic to farmer inputs, including labor, operations, and markets, how these changed from the initial lockdowns in early 2020 and through 2021, and on farmer adaptive responses to these impacts. In some contexts, innovation and adaptive responses counteracted negative impacts. We saw diversifying markets, catering to consumer safety concerns, switching to direct and e-markets, hiring in more labor or relying on family labor, and switching to high demand crops and products as the most prominent adaptive responses. Farmers who lacked access to information and government programs, in large part because of language, technology and institutional barriers, missed out on pandemic related opportunities and suffered the most. As we enter the post-pandemic new normal it is important to take stock of lessons learned, and to continue to support those initiatives and innovations that were pivotal not only for weathering the storm, but for building a more inclusive and resilient agri-food system in the long-run.

Integrating sustainable Islamic social finance: An Analytical Network Process using the Benefit Opportunity Cost Risk (ANP BOCR) framework: The case of Indonesia

The utilization of Islamic social finance instruments is far behind what is expected. To realize its full potential, Islamic social finance instruments must be integrated. This study examined solutions and priority strategies for integrating sustainable Islamic social finance that could be implemented in the short and long term using the Benefit, Opportunity, Cost, and Risk (BOCR) framework, which includes six aspects: Governance, sustainable financing, institutional aspect, human resources, regulations, and supporting technology. This qualitative research employed the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method using the benefit, opportunity, cost, and risk analysis. The data were obtained mainly through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with respondents among academics, practitioners, associations, regulators, and community leaders. The respondents were selected for their expertise and experience in the selected topic. The data were processed using the Microsoft Excel and Super Decision software. There are several findings worth considering from the analysis. First, the highest priority in integrating Islamic social finance aspects are human resources (0.97), regulation (0.86), and technology (0.76). Second, based on the short- and long-term analysis, financial integration through sustainable financing (0.01 and 1.44, respectively) and improving human resource quality through certification and training (0.01 and 1.56, respectively) is a priority solution and strategy to integrate sustainable Islamic social finance. Meanwhile, according to expert judgments, integrating national data (0.24) and optimizing technology use (0.18) are priority solutions and strategies. The findings emphasize the critical role of improving human resource quality to utilize technology, with experts identifying a national data integration as the most critical solution. As a result, relevant stakeholders are concerned about technology management training for Islamic philanthropic managers, with the goal of maximizing the potential of technology's growing role and adoption.

Income shock and food insecurity prediction Vietnam under the pandemic

As COVID-19 threatens the food security of vulnerable populations across the globe, there is an increasing need to identify places that are affected most in order to target aid. We propose a two-step approach to predict changes in food insecurity risk caused by income shocks at a granular level using existing household-level data and external information on aggregate income shocks. We apply this approach to assess changes in food insecurity risk during the pandemic in Vietnam. Using national household survey data between 2010 and 2018, we first estimate that a 10% decrease in income leads to a 3.5% increase in food insecurity. We then use the 2019 national Labor Force Survey to predict changes in the share of food-insecure households caused by the income shocks during the pandemic for 702 districts. We find that the small, predicted change in food insecurity risk at the national level masks substantial variation at the district level, and changes in food insecurity risk are larger among young children. Food relief policies, therefore, should prioritize a small number of districts predicted to be severely affected.

Impacts of COVID-19 on the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector in Developing Countries and Ways Forward

Fish is a major source of food and nutritional security for subsistence communities in developing countries, it also has linkages with the economic and supply-chain dimensions of these countries. Burgeoning literature has revealed the adverse impacts of COVID-19 on the fisheries and aquaculture sector, which serves as the major source of income and employment for numerous people globally. This study has employed a systematic literature review of the overall impacts of COVID-19 on the fisheries and aquaculture sector in developing countries using the PRISMA approach. This study reveals that COVID-19 has posed numerous challenges to fish supply chain actors, including a shortage of inputs, a lack of technical assistance, an inability to sell the product, a lack of transportation for the fish supply, export restrictions on fish and fisheries products, and a low fish price. These challenges lead to inadequate production, unanticipated stock retention, and a loss in returns. COVID-19 has also resulted in food insecurity for many small-scale fish growers. Fish farmers are becoming less motivated to raise fish and related products as a result of these cumulative consequences. Because of COVID-19’s different restriction measures, the demand and supply sides of the fish food chain have been disrupted, resulting in reduced livelihoods and economic vulnerability. In order to assist stakeholders to cope with, adapt to, and build resilience to pandemics and other shocks, this study offers policy recommendations to address the COVID-19-induced crisis in the fisheries and aquaculture sector.